“When you start working, everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue working, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave” / J.C

In All That You Can’t Leave Behind Franz Edvard Cedrins and Halla Òlafsdottir take on the roles of choreographers, dancers, instrumentalists, composers, and music producers. Exploring potentialities of the performer becoming the orchestra while simultaneously turning music into performers. All That You Can´t Leave Behind works with the presence of live music, recorded music, of loudspeakers, and the presence of live and audio-recorded dancing bodies.

The collaboration between Franz Edvard Cedrins and Halla Ólafsdóttir started way back, when they first met, both working in Dorte Olesens performance Orena Tankar, a beginning of an exceptional friendship involving endless conversations lurking around the occult, and various ideas about the animate and inanimate. They went to new age conventions and expos, got some complex tarot card readings (actually some really miserable readings for one of them, so miserable it took four new card readings in a row to get back on track) got their auras analysed by an Aural Spectral Machine 3000 and went on a couple of shamanistic astral travels in a salt-walled basement close to the supreme court of Stockholm.

Halla Ólafsdóttir is an Icelandic artist, dancer and choreographer living and working in Stockholm. She works in different constellations and collaborations with an interest in expanding the notion of dance and choreography. Her stage work is concerned with methods of reinterpretation of recognizable formats of representation, facilitating a shared experience. Halla is a MA choreography graduate from DOCH (Stockholm) and was a part of mychoreography and INPEX, creating and performing a number of pieces and projects which have toured to festivals in Sweden, England, Belgium, France, Germany, Vienna and the United States. She has recently been touring the piece Giselle, together with John Moström, which involves the partake of over a hundred artists in Europe. As well as the piece Beauty and the Beast, together with Amanda Apetrea, which won the Prix Jardin d’Europe Awards at ImpulsTanz in 2013. Her work takes on various forms and expressions, she co-curated the Reykjavík Dance Festival: A Series of Event 2012 where 30 artist were invited to partake in a 10 day festival in Iceland and recently played the lead role in the feature film Under Influence by Sidney Leoni, premiered at Dansens Hus, 2015. She has worked collectively with choreographers such as Zoe Poluch, Stina Nyberg, Nadja Hjorton and Amanda Apetrea. Together they constitute SAMLINGEN that in December 2013 joined forces with the Cullberg Ballet for a temporary installation at the Dance museum in Stockholm, invaded Kulturhuset with history writing and were key note speakers at the Post Dance conference at MDT in 2015. Halla was part of a collective project with the band the Knife, co-creating and preforming, along with eleven other artists, the show Shaking the Habitual, touring it in Europe and North-America, in 2013-2014. She recently premiered the pieces All That You Can’t Leave Behind at MDT in Stockholm and What A Feeling together with Lovísa Gunnarsdóttir and the Iceland Dance Company at Reykjavík City Theater. She is currently performing in Nadja Hjorton´s Medea and starting a new creation of the piece DEAD along with Amanda Apetrea.

Franz Edvard Cedrins is a orchestral composer, choreographer, and visual artist based in Stockholm. He studied fine arts and media at Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm and has since then presented work at Norrlands Operan (SE) Dramaten / The Royal Dramatic Theatre (SE) Sveriges Television (SE) Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde (SE) Rogaland teater (NO) National Theatret (NO) A.C Popov Central (RU) Steirischer Herbst (AU) SSG Los Angeles (US) among other places. His work is often multi-faceted encompassing dance, sculpture, installation, photography, sound art, and pop music. As a composer, music producer and sound designer he has during the last years worked with choreographers such as Gunilla Heilborn, John Moström, Nefeli Ikonomou and Sebastian Lingserius. He’s currently working on the piece All that you can´t leave behind with Halla Ólafsdottir, the piece Hamlet together with Andersson dance company, and his forthcoming film Scandinavian Nightlife.

CREDITS

(Concept & choreography & dance & original sound & original music by: Halla Ólafsdóttir and Franz Edvard Cedrins. With support of Konstnärsnämnden / The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and Kulturförvaltningen Stockholm. This presentation is part of the project [DNA] Departures and Arrivals, which is co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Commission.)

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.